Social Networking: Friending Netiquette 101

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Social Networking: Friending Netiquette 101

How would you react if the McDonald’s drive-thru intercom voice asked if they could quietly follow you around and watch what you do for the foreseeable future? Would you strike up a conversation with a stranger at the store about the tawdry rumors swirling around your neighbor? Do you join every group or organization that comes your way just to be nice?

If you answered ‘no’ to these three questions, you’re like most of us. Yet when these situations occur in the context of social media, the best way to handle them is not always as self-evident.

Social media provides a convenient way to catch up with friends and family. But it’s also verging on a takeover of traditional corporate marketing. For most professionals, however, the first step into social media is not a corporate presence, but a personal account. Understanding how to manage your personal social circle can be a challenge, so we’d like to provide a few insights from our own experiences.

Each social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) has rules and methods for establishing connections and sharing information with friends and strangers. We won’t attempt to describe those platform-specific settings here. Instead, we’ll use physical world examples to help you make decisions about how to best manage your cyberspace persona. We all set our own boundaries, so how you use our comments is up to you, but hopefully this will provide some fuel for thought.

Who Do I Connect To (or Avoid)? No, you aren’t obligated to accept every friend request that comes your way! You set the boundaries for your online social circle. You wouldn’t typically give a new acquaintance the green light to follow you around for the next year. So if your first knowledge of someone is when they send a Facebook friend request, consider that when you click that “Accept” button, they’ll become privy to whatever it is you say on Facebook. There’s no right or wrong answer, but it’s something to consider as you make that decision.

This “friend or don’t friend” dilemma points out the importance of another rule that applies both in “real” life and in social networking: give first, then receive. To illustrate, let’s put the shoe on the other foot: In your online wanderings, you have stumbled upon a friend-of-a-friend who shares your interest in woodworking. And you’ve decided that you’d like to connect with them via Facebook. How do you best accomplish that? First give (information about yourself) and then ask to receive (a friend confirmation). The more information you can give to them about why you might want to become their friend, the better the chances that they’ll accept. (The assumption here is that you’ve already decided that you don’t mind them reading whatever it is that you post on your Facebook wall.)

What Do I Say? When you go online to dish the scoop on your neighbor, are you sure that you won’t be sticking your foot in your mouth? Your 100 online friends may have unexpected relationships with that neighbor, or your rumors may be spread with your name attached as “the source”. Rumors spread quickly and easily on their own, but the Internet is like a steroid for rumors. If you wouldn’t be comfortable saying it to anyone, the best bet is to leave it off of your social network. This same concept applies to off-color jokes and info of a personal nature (i.e., “my kids are home alone this afternoon”, or “we’ll be gone on vacation next week”)

What Groups Do I Join?

If you’re a joiner by nature, you’ll find a world of opportunities to join on social networks. And truthfully, you can join (or friend) a lot of groups or organizations on Facebook without it becoming unmanageable. Handling groups in LinkedIn and Twitter provides different challenges, though. Let’s take a look:

LinkedIn groups tend to focus on professional interests, providing many benefits to their members, including insights into an industry, forums to establish your expertise on a subject, and general networking opportunities. You’ll likely discover a lot of interesting groups, and if you join them all, you’ll become overwhelmed by the volume of messages on those groups. We’ve found that it’s best to carefully choose just a few groups that you’ll have time to get involved in. It will give you the opportunity to stay on top of the discussions and become better known within the group (really, a “community”). Then, when you have a question to ask of the group, people will be willing to respond (remember, “ask first, then receive”…).

Twitter is different on almost every level. First, people are more likely to follow you (it’s not “friending” on Twitter) based on what you tweet about than who you are. Twitter connections are based on shared interests. So it is a more impersonal social network, based on the idea of allowing strangers to follow you. You don’t join groups on Twitter, but just follow people or lists of people. Like LinkedIn groups, you may find that following certain people (or creating lists to track those you are most concerned with) can allow you to manage this social network platform without becoming overwhelmed.

One last comment on groups: make sure you understand what you are joining, especially if you’ve just been invited to join a group by someone else. Being listed as a member of a group may serve as a tacit endorsement of the group. Are you sure that you support what they stand for?

Next time you join a LinkedIn group, update your Twitter status, or consider a Facebook friend request, stop and think: would I do (or say) this offline? Would you give the McDonald’s drive-thru voice carte blanche to follow you around, talk trash about a neighbor with a stranger, or join some unknown social activist group? Probably not. But if you do decide to go for it… well, let us know how it turns out for you! We’re sure it would be interesting!

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